


A Sprig of Hope

by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Can be read as gen, F/F, F/M, M/M, Plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-06-21
Packaged: 2018-07-16 11:27:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7266277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera_DragonMuse/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was the way their garden grew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sprig of Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sylviamorris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviamorris/gifts).



This was the way their garden grew: in fits and starts. 

Poe’s plant was the first one to enter the ground though he forswore all involvement to follow. 

“See, like this,” he knelt down in the dusty earth and dug in a rusted piece of metal that was shaped a little like a spade. It had come from a junk pile. He set the flower, already a little wilted in the heat, into the dirt and buried the roots. Strong calloused fingers built a mound from a long ago faded memory. He trickled a cup of water over the results. 

“And then what?” Rey asked, touched one leaf with a frown. 

“And then you let it do it’s thing. Make sure no weeds are growing near it. Water it sometimes,” Poe shrugged, clapping dirt off his hands. 

“How often is sometimes?” Finn looked suspiciously at the flower like it might die just to spite him. He leaned heavily on a cane still, but was looking much better. 

“Damned if I know,” Poe stood up and clapped him on the shoulder. “You’ve just learned everything I know about gardening.” 

Rey and Finn exchanged a wide eyed desperate look. Within days, he was buried in any reading material he could find and she’d asked everyone they knew for advice. 

Whatever help that offered was dubious, but news of their project spread. 

“Here,” Jessika offered Rey a heavy pot with only a tiny sprig of green sticking out of it. “My mother keeps sending me seeds from home and I can’t do a damn thing with them. So. It’s yours.” 

“Thanks?” Rey looked a the frail sprig and brought it to Finn. 

“Uh, could be a carnation or a venus flytrap?” He shrugged. “Let’s just stick it in the ground and see what happens.” 

Their plot was small and tented over with breathable plastic to hold the water. A micro-greenhouse that filled slowly with offerings. No two plants were alike and most of them didn’t make it. 

“Sorry, little guy,” Rey sighed over a brown leaf.

“We’ll try again,” Finn determined squatting next to her, even the cane gone now. 

“Can I use the Force to make them grow?” She asked Luke one afternoon. 

“You could,” he allowed with the permanent frown between his eyes. “But I think it’s better if you don’t.” 

“Why?” She demanded. 

No answer was forthcoming. 

She brought this information to Finn, who sat back on their shared bunk. 

“Well, encouraging life is a good thing, isn’t it? I mean what’s he worried about?” he rolled a marble between his fingers, the light catching on the glass. “Except that...it kind of feels like cheating.” 

“Wouldn’t you cheat to save one of them?” Rey asked plaintively. 

“I think you’re asking me something else,” he put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her temple. 

When they were both off planet, someone was always willing to check on their mish-mash garden and water it. Often Poe would send them photos with captions like ‘Day 47- Escape Plans Still Hindered By Lack of Feet’ or ‘I Leaf You!’. 

Day by day, week by week, they had something like a real garden. Their first vegtables, tiny and hard cousins of a tomato, they ate straight off the vine. Finn closed his eyes and licked the juice off his fingertips. 

“What’re you thinking about?” Rey leaned against him. 

“I’m thinking I can taste the sun. And that’s what was missing before.” 

Before, that great yawning time that meant so many things to them both, hung always around and over them. Before the garden, before they had saved themselves and each other. Just...before. 

“Yeah, you’re right,” she looked down at their garden, richly alive and thriving. “You’re really right.” 

They learned from that first growing season and the next year planted in straight rows with everything marked. They drew in a harvest that made everyone cheer. It had been an impossible year, weighting down young shoulders with old burdens. 

Finn did a new kind of research and taught himself to cook. He made rich stews that would keep in a ship’s cooling unit for a long time, packing them away unbeknownst to the receivers. Poe would go to find one of his protein bars and instead there was a container that smelled like home. Or Rey would open her travel bag to find a chopped salad smothered in her favorite cheese. 

“You don’t have to,” Poe would protest. 

“I can feed myself, “Rey would insist. 

Finn only rolled his eyes and got on with it. He didn’t tell them about growing up eating the same routine meals, how the others would smuggle each other the best items as tokens of affection. He didn’t tell them that bread became a language of love. 

“Thought you might be interested in this,” Leia appeared at Poe’s elbow. “Someone brought it home as salvage.” 

Poe looked it over with an enormous grin and resisted the urge to hug her only barely. 

“It’s perfect, thank you.” 

It took him weeks to squirrel away the time to repair it. Then another few weeks to find a time when he could get it onboard the Falcon without anyone noticing. But he’d learned patience from Rey’s sniper focus and Finn’s steady breathing. He waited and coaxed them both on board when they all had a night to themselves. 

“It’s beautiful,” Rey held onto Finn’s hand. 

“Yeah,” he studied Poe’s face over her head. “It is.” 

“They used to use them for long journeys,” Poe rocked on his heels delighted. 

The hydropod brought even the smell of good earth into the ship’s staleness, but it was currently devoid of life. 

“What should we plant in it?” Rey studied the mechanism with interest. 

“I think Poe should decide,” Finn decreed. 

“Me?” 

“You’re the one that had the idea in the first place.” 

Which was how Poe found his hands in dirt with the two of them at his back once more. One of their hands on each of his shoulders as willed the tiny sprig of basil to live. The Falcon was no cradle, but it held many lives. It hummed around them, engines singing to the thrum of the universe. 

Rey and Finn drew Poe up into a hug, spreading warmth between. Maybe the basil lived and maybe it didn’t, but the three of them would survive, rooted as they were in each other.


End file.
